Chapter 15 - Smoke in the Workshop
Flames climbed the workshop's back wall by the time Ricardo arrived. Firefighters held him behind the tape. Sparks drifted over the apartment roofs, and six families stood in the street wrapped in coats.
"Is everyone out?" Ricardo shouted.
Mr. Hollis counted the tenants. Then his face changed. "Lenny went back for his father's toolbox. I didn't see him come out."
Ricardo ran toward the captain, who radioed the information to crews already inside. He wanted to charge through the door himself. Instead he stood in the rain, powerless, hearing a child cry somewhere behind him.
Two firefighters emerged carrying seventeen-year-old Lenny between them. He coughed hard, but he was conscious. The captain said the fire had spread from a storage room, and the cause would have to be investigated.
The tenants were moved away from the building. Ricardo called temporary housing contacts while Elena checked whether anyone needed medical attention. Arturo, still at the hospital, heard the news by phone and asked only, "Are my people safe?"
"They're safe," Ricardo said. "The fire department got Lenny out."
"Then the building can be fixed."
After the flames were controlled, an investigator showed Ricardo a photograph of the burned storage-room door. Someone had cut through its lock before the fire. Nearby sat the remains of a portable fuel can.
Nothing was yet proven. But Ricardo knew someone had entered the workshop after being warned not to.
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His phone lit up with a message from an unknown number: YOU CAN SAVE YOUR FATHER OR YOUR BUSINESS. NOT BOTH.
Attached was a photograph of Mia walking into school on Friday.
